Pierre Messmer, a member of the French Resistance who was the country's prime minister from 1972 to 1974, has died at age 91, former President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday.

Messmer died Wednesday afternoon at Val-de-Grace hospital in Paris, according to the French daily Le Figaro.

Messmer entered the French Resistance in 1940, fleeing Nazi-occupied France for England on a cargo ship. He then participated in major campaigns in North Africa and elsewhere and stormed the beaches of Normandy in June 1944.

After the war, he entered politics and was appointed prime minister in July 1972 by then-President Georges Pompidou. Following Pompidou's death in April 1974, Messmer was widely viewed as a potential presidential candidate, but he was outmaneuvered by his rivals for the position and never held another major political office.

Chirac called Messmer a "statesman who was passionately committed to his country."

"With him, a great Frenchman is gone, a hero of fighting France ... of the liberation of Paris, a great statesman who was passionately active for his country," Chirac said in a statement.

President Nicolas Sarkozy called Messmer one of France's "greatest servants" and said "the entire nation bows before his memory."

"Pierre Messmer was first of all a magnificent combatant who was among the first to rally behind Gen. (Charles) de Gaulle," Sarkozy said in a statement.

Born on March 20, 1916, in the Paris suburb of Vincennes, Messmer studied to work as an administrator in France's overseas colonies. Following World War II, he worked in Vietnam and later West Africa on the decolonization of France's overseas possessions.

Messmer was named minister of the Armed Forces under de Gaulle in 1960, when France's war in Algeria -- the jewel in its colonial crown -- was reaching its bloody apex. After the North African nation won its independence in 1962, Messmer headed France's overhaul of the army.